July 26, 2012

As The Earnest Feminist Awaits Her White Knight...

Following the Aurora shooting we get the inevitable silliness from a feminist troubled by the disproportion between men shielding their girlfriends from bullets and women shielding their boyfriends from bullets.

I admire the self-refuting nature of her presentation. She advances both of these propositions:

(1) Heroism has never had a gender: just tell that to Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, or any of the female soldiers who risk their lives daily in our military;

and, following a mention of the United 93 action on 9/11,

(2) We just know it feels good to have heroes and it feels good to sit down on an airplane and think, “Maybe there is someone like Todd Beamer on this flight.”

Do men really sit and hope that someone else will be Todd Beamer? My impression is that we aspire to be Todd Beamer, if situationally appropriate. As to women's aspirations, well, the author just described hers. Which is fine - if she is 120 pounds of coiled literary angst, she may not be the best choice to grapple with a trained terrorist anyway.

As to her point - if "heroism" includes moral courage, as it should, then women are well represented by examples from history. If heroism is limited to brief displays of physical courage, there are surely many more examples involving men. That seems to follow from both cultural norms and basic biology, since the average guy is bigger and stronger than the average women.

That said, absolutely no one is surprised when a mother is physically fierce in protecting her children, as exemplified by Patricia Legarreta, who rallied her two young ones out of the Aurora theater (with help from a young man!) after her boyfriend cut and ran.

And Todd Beamer had help from the stewardesses on United 93. But let's read about some of the guys who took the lead in the scuffling:

This much we know, they were big guys: Bingham was a 6-foot-4 rugby player; Glick, also a rugby player and judo champion; Beamer was 6 foot 1 and 200 pounds, and Nacke was a 5-foot-9, 200-pound weightlifter with a "Superman" tattoo on his shoulder.

Logic, biology and cultural norms all pointed to letting the men lead the way on United 93, and in many other moments of sudden physical peril.

As a father of an 19 yo girl who goes to school in the Bronx, I think about these things. American society --particularly in schools from elementary to universities -- is so feminized I wonder what would happen if the SHTF; would a young man step up and try to protect my little girl? Her current boyfriend seems to be a very nice young man, he's very polite anyway. But he does seem to be a bit of a softy. Ordinarily that's fine, but I wonder if the SHTF on the subway, or at a concert, will he step up? or has feminized society taken that instinct away?

Interesting observation NK.The daughter and her boyfriend were verbally assaulted at a movie theatre earlier this year.They were waiting for the movie to begin and heard an argument in the rows behind them.The offending person had started an argument with another couple and daughter's boyfriend tried to diffuse the situation.The manager was brought in and would not remove the offensive person.Realizing how upset and scared the daughter was,the boyfriend said,we're leaving.She told me later that she had never been in such a tense situation which is saying something as she's lived in the DC area for 13 years.

I had this discussion with a relative who had been through the training that women currently are not allowed to do but there is political pressure to open up.

A big part of it is carrying 200 lbs over shoulder for an insane distance I have now forgotten. Simulating the ability to bring a fallen comrade to safety. The answer was if you could find women who could do half that weight at half that distance then maybe you could start the discussion but even that would be unlikely.

It is physical to a degree most fit men cannot sustain and you now want members who are not an asset in a crisis?

The feminist is just angry that all the theories on remaking human nature are once again losing out to reality.

Marlene@9:54-- I think what the boyfriend did qualifies as stepping up. Lucky you.

RickB@9:28-- that's all logical, but of course, if I did anything like that my daughter would never speak to me again, so there's that unwelcome side effect. I've already gotten the "you dislike so and so" speech.

Said candidate did not show. (He clearly reads here) My 5 pages of questions went to waste, which was 90% what I had prepared. Dick, unprepared as always. had no problem moving from here to there in a pretty interesting conversation for the most of the hour. He is a good radio man.

WE ended on the most contentious note: Dick was demanding compromise on the tax bill. Since an increase in taxes on the rich will fund the government for 8.5 days and lose 800,000 jobs I asked if 4 days and 400,000 jobs was okay with him. And that's where we left it.

Okay, a personal story about how we can have a little bit of input to our news sources/providers.

Yesterday morning, FNC on in the background, they were touting the NBC/WSJ poll - simply doing what they always do, putting out the data with absolutely no analysis of how accurate the data was (hello - skewed???).

So, I took to Twitter. I chose Bret Baier because he does interact with his followers. Here are my series of comments, questions:

Why does FNC report poll data with skewed samples and offer no caveats about poll results?

FNC has analysts from L and R for every political topic except polling. Why?

Your viewers get polling analysis from multiple other sources, why not from FNC also?

Time passed, no reply. So I asked:

I asked some (respectful) questions this A.M., why no courtesy reply?

He responded:

...about polls? We do provide perspective and use a # of different polls and the RCP average. Some polls are better than others

Okey, dokey. So I was surprised when last night both BOR and Hannity made substantive remarks on the NBC/WSJ polling and how it skewed to favorably to Dems. Hhhmm, I thought - they haven't done that before.

Now, this morning, FNC on in the background Martha Mc and Bill H have on a polling analyst to discuss polling, methodology, etc. My ears perked up - they have never done that before.

So, back to Twitter and Bret:

Yay! This AM on FNC good discussion about polling and methodology! Good work FNC.

He replied:

I passed your suggestion on

Also, Bill and Martha said this morning that the analyst would be back frequently throughout election season.

OT,
It's very encouraging to see the Dow soaring on the ECB's promise to print more Euros.
Now if Uncle Ben will just get his Dollar spewing banjo out and take a seat on that bridge we can have dueling debasements and all will be right with the world.
If we're lucky Draghi and Ben will print enough for the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, and even us Americans to borrow enough money to pay off their debt and we'll all get to squeal like pigs.

Charlie@1009-- that's exactly right. About 10 years ago, Rosie adopted some kids and the local cops (Greenwich?) were slow in approving the Glock carry permits for her bodyguards protecting the kids while dropping them at school, and she went into full-- "don't you know who I am" BS and demanded that her bodyguards be able to gun-up on school grounds and protect her kids. Rosie says: "Gun control for thee, hand cannons for me bodyguards!" Fat hypocrite.

I'd compromise on taxes. In return for Ryan type entitlement reform, I'd agree to an excise tax on the compensation of former high governmental officials who move to the private sector. The tax would be imposed on the difference between the private sector comp (valuing options as compensation at the grant date), and the average of the comp while in government. The tax rate would be 50%, and would apply for 10 years after the governmental official leaves the government.

Rasmussen
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Mitt Romney attracting 47% of the vote, while President Obama earns support from 44%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

The JEF's new ads are just screaming to be hit outta the park. This garbage about "the rich paying a little more" deserves a breakdown of the percentage of the total that they already pay. Also this "Romney wants the middle class to pay more"; when did he ever propose that?

Speaking of hit outta the park, is the DC area getting a big case of Nattitude?

I guess now we have to do their work for them. Although I think it's a waste of time on the WaPo. Every major article in there this morning was preposterous, beginning with the lead story which implied that the suits to stop voter I.D. were important and necessary to protect the right to vote.

Ig@10:17-- debasement? about a year ago a finserv guy with 30 years experience told me there WILL be further debasement and there WILL be inflation. BenB believes it's needed to restore US household balance sheets by artificially improving home equity through inflation,and and as a practical matter there is the matter of the $15TRILLION or so public debt that has to be whittled down by inflation. He doubted that the FED could fine tune QE enough to pull that off. I asked what this all meant for a working stiff like me? His answer was "the paper assets you own will be worth less, and what you need to live will cost more." I know MelR disagrees with this, but I think that's right.

Great ccal! Oh darn,Jane,why didn't the candidate show? NK,the boyfriend is a great guy.CH might be interested to know that the boyfriend is in the doctoral program at the Univ.of MD School of Music,so I guess he's a singing Terp?

One of my friends is a very effeminate dude. He is very delicate about everything he does (with the exception of being a Raiders fan). No girlfriends so we just assumed he hadn't blossomed into a full fruitcake yet.

My friend and I went to the taco shop and were on our way back to my house to watch a game and we passed a drug addict couple that were screaming at each other. Just as we neared the man grabbed the woman and threw her to the ground. My friend yells "stop the car!"

He jumped out before I had completely stopped and ran right between the the couple. There was a fire station across the street where all the heroes were sitting and watching this whole mess unfold. As I got out of the car I shouted for the firefighters to do something. A handful came over.

My friend is calmly telling the dope head that it is not cool to sock women. He was trying to diffuse the situation in his own delicate way. The punk looks at this circle that has surrounded him made up of some pretty good sized firefighters and myself (TC and DoT can attest to the general dirtbaggedness appearance I give off).

The punk decides to lunge at my friend, who is about half the size as anyone else there. Big mistake. To steal from Croce, when my friend was done with him, he "looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone."

Turns out my friend's dad used to beat his mom on a regular basis. Hitting women triggered something I would have never expected from him.

Brava! I wonder if FNC would follow up if you tipped them off to Lakoff being the source of "you didn't build that"? I'm a bit hesitant about letting them know though. There's always the chance the Pinhead Troika has another Lakoff strategy memo about to be implemented.

BenB's QE plan certainly did not improve housing values-- that's a proven fact at this point. What will further QE do? It will certainly increase asset inflation where the hot money goes- to date that has been USTs, Oil, gold and food commodities and to a lesser degree equities. How does that help the average american worker and consumer? So why is BenB hell bent on further QE?

The Dude-- he stepped up to help a woman in trouble. What he's like and why he did it is of no real consequence to me-- he stepped up in the right way and defended himself when assaulted. It's all good.

--What will further QE do? It will certainly increase asset inflation where the hot money goes- to date that has been USTs, Oil, gold and food commodities and to a lesser degree equities.--

Read a very good article the other day arguing classical inflation may no longer occur at all with the new mobility of money and particular asset bubbles rather than general inflation are the new norm.

--So why is BenB hell bent on further QE?--

For the same reason the Wizard didn't want anyone to pull back the curtain?

I see Obama as a deer. Bucks routinely send the fawns and doe into a clearing to face any danger while they remain in the trees. That would seem to fit the personality of a man who falsely claims credit for killing a terrorist.

Why Voter ID matters. The extent of same day registration fraud in Racine is now becoming clear as voter verification postcards come back "undeliverable". The lawsuits are to perpetuate vote fraud, but you knew that.

Obviously US home values have decreased orders of magnitude more than the QE1/QE2. BenBs stated purpose for QE1 was improving home prices and improving US household balance sheets. QE2 was aimed at equity prices, that has been more successful. What can I say, I can only go by BenB's sworn testimony. The problems are obvious: the Dems killed the labor market with Obamacare, debt spending and tax threats, and the intrinsic velocity of money is at a standstill -- how does more QE help either one of these?

Clarice-met a fashionista friend yesterday for a drink. She had missed the "you didn't build that" and had told her parents recently they had to be exaggerating about the AG telling states no photo id. Said she needed to call them and apologize.

"you didn't build that" is still ramping up its ability to garner attention but no one is amused.

Yay CC!

And Jane-that was an excellent comeback on the compromise. What I am working on this morning the author keeps dropping references to natural state of equilibrium and to get back to balance when that's not the theory of the philosopher or book.

Clearly building up quite a few strawmen and mischaracterizations to use later. Yet another reason to deplore factual knowledge. It allows an analytical sort to recognize the explanations are bogus.

Then you wonder-"Is this person ignorant of what they ought to know or deliberately lying to me?"

Neither is good. Especially if the comeback to follow-up questions is to proclaim "I am the expert."

Rick-I think the Pinhead Troika fosters a reflex response that "I am President" as if that should shut off debate. Adds to his natural petulance. Likely to get worse and more apparent.

I don't want to get in a big discussion about it, but it seems like it would be the exact opposite. He should hate men and want to protect women with that background. Or are you just talking about dysfunction resulting in gayness?

Gee if you've isolated the gay gene, Chuck, better write a paper up on it quick; there's a Nobel waiting.
If there is a genetic component, which I am reasonable enough to acknowledge there might very well be, do you have some information demonstrating environmental factors do not influence its effects? You might want to publish that too.

First, I've never thought of myself as the 'hero' type, and still don't.

But once when my wife and I were walking, we were charged by a really REALLY large dog, I think it was an Irish wolf-hound. It turned out that it just wanted to lick our faces. But as soon as I saw this dog coming at us, I had grabbed my wife and pushed her behind me, and then turned to face the dog head-on. I had no memory of this after the fact, but my wife was impressed.

"TC and DoT can attest to the general dirtbaggedness appearance I give off."

Sorry to disagree somewhat with your self-description, TK, but I'd say it's more of a clean cut dirtbag look of a renaissance man (renaissance man because TK is familiar with everything from arcane governmental regs. to the insides and under the hoods of autos to general philosophical concepts)!

There appears to be evidence to suggest a bad relationship with ones father can influence the psycho-sexual development of boys. Unlike Charlie apparently, I imagine there is something very complex going on that renders the issue less than black and white, but the evidence still exists.

You did. I sort of have a crust on Salty. I first noticed it when he was playing for Texas and re-recognized it when I noticed he has gotten prettier as he has aged. I was happy he did well. Not happy we lost, but happy Salty did well.

Jane-that's precisely why they seek to inculcate a belief in consensus based on dialogue practically from the cradle on. It makes illegitimate positions that should not even be considered part of the "resolution."

Gag. But we have many young people now who believe that fully.

But compromise is always the fair solution. Of course fair is another word that should be outlawed.